Sara writes:<\/p>\n
My husband doesn\u2019t hate my chosen girl name (Norah Anne Zimmermann) but he doesn\u2019t love it. Since I was sixteen or maybe younger (and I\u2019m almost 30 now) this has been what I have wanted to name my little girl, and so this him not liking it is really making me sad. (I chose Norah Anne because Norah is my daddy\u2019s first name abbreviated spelt backwards (his name is Ron) Anne is my mother\u2019s middle name but also his mother\u2019s middle name. Our boy name (we aren\u2019t finding out what we are having) is Jackson James Zimmermann which we both love.) I feel like Norah is already a person to me, MY little girl, and like I\u2019m abandoning her. I mean my heart is really breaking over this. I know that if I got upset\/cried over it\/pushed a bit I could make him go for it, but then I\u2019d always wonder, our whole lives, if he let me name her Norah because I was being a big baby about it and he secretly hates her name.
His comments about it are wide\u2026one day he\u2019ll say it doesn\u2019t sound like a strong name. The next he\u2019ll say he thinks it sounds too much like, too close too, Noah who is our nephew, which I think it\u2019s a stretch to say they sound the same, I know it\u2019s just one extra letter but I don\u2019t find that similarity to mean we can\u2019t use it. He comes home from work with suggestions so my feeling is he\u2019s really hoping he\u2019ll find a name he likes that I can also like, and that Norah just isn\u2019t doing it for him.
His suggestions:
His number one and what he keeps bringing up is : Brigen (my problem is it\u2019s a place, a holler in our home town to boot(no longer live there), not a name, and I can\u2019t get over how it sounds slangish for Bringing, you know so any middle name you give her sounds like she\u2019s bringing it, you know, Brigen Grace, Brigen Hope \u2026so forth)
Molly (it sounds like a little girls name, but not like a woman\u2019s name)
Sadie (I don\u2019t like the sad in it, and again sounds like a little girls name)
Jessica (Eh,)
Ruby (no)
Ruth (which his big selling point is we could call her Baby Ruth which, I\u2019m sure she\u2019d appreciate that.)
I\u2019ve been trying hard the last week to ditch the name Norah and find something else I like, but everything seems to please me way less than Norah but here\u2019s what I have:
Elery (I like how soft this sounds, but he’d probably buy Norah over this)
Sophia (I like this, but not Sophie, which she\u2019d end up being called I\u2019m sure)
Hannah (I like this but I had a dog named this once, which not sure my child would appreciate that story)
Emma (but it seems, overdone)
Isabella (maybe the same as emma overdone?)
Cora (I like this best but fear I like it best because its so similar to Norah, and if he was to soften to Norah should we have another girl, we couldn\u2019t have a Norah and a Cora)<\/p>\nI feel like we\u2019re in a situation where someone is going to have to fold. I mean, Norah has been such a part of my dreams for years, like I said earlier it\u2019s almost like I\u2019ve dreamed her into existence, and so I feel like I\u2019m grieving this loss. I\u2019ve told him somewhat how much I love the name and that I\u2019ve always thought of it as my daughter\u2019s name, but I haven\u2019t pushed it and I don\u2019t want too. But If he doesn\u2019t start liking it soon, then I\u2019m going to have to give it up, and I don\u2019t want to be looking at my newborn baby and wishing she had a different name. Maybe this baby will be a boy and I\u2019m doing all this worrying for nothing\u2026but.
How would you deal with this issue? Do you have any suggestions of names that I might like as well as Norah? Our baby is due early January.
Thanks<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI think the first step is to consciously separate the name from the child. When you say abandoning the name feels like abandoning the child, you’re explaining to us how intensely you feel about the name and the style of intensity it is—but I think it could help to see if you can reason with your feelings. Picture the baby growing inside you, and picture a little slideshow of names going over his or her head, one second each: Liz. Roger. Hailey. Caden. Margaret. Elmer. Bitsy. Ian. Jennifer. Brady. Madison. Liam. April. Elliot. Bianca. Nick. Notice how the curled comfy growing baby stays the same and only the name changes.<\/p>\n
We know this is how it is: the baby is who he or she is, and won’t be swapped out for a different baby if you don’t use the name you’d planned to use at age 16. We know that if you are carrying a girl and you abandon the name Norah, the name blows away like a dry leaf but your daughter stays right where she is: you lose the name, but not the child. Some names may feel more like “my baby” than other names, and that’s a good sorting method for finding one’s own naming style—but the baby is your baby either way. And in this case, it sounds like Norah is the name of your little girl where “your” was singular: the dream-baby of a young girl who wasn’t picturing another parent being involved. Now that the other parent has arrived and the baby is more than a dream, it seems appropriate to find a name for your-plural little girl.<\/p>\n
It will be difficult to do this if you compare each new possible name candidate to the name Norah. If the name Norah is out of the running for this baby (and it sounds like it is, if your husband doesn’t love it and you don’t want to use it unless he does), your goal is not to find a name you like better than the name Norah, but instead to find the name you like best of the names that remain. (And I think you’re smart to keep in mind that Norah might be a possible sister name later on: Paul was opposed to a name with our first baby, but then he’s the one who chose it for our second baby.)<\/p>\n
You came up with Norah by spelling your dad’s name backwards, so you could look for other names that include “nor,” such as Eleanor or Honor or Honora.<\/p>\n
Or you could look for names that spell his name forward, such as Bronwyn, Veronica, Rona, Caron, Claron, Heron, Aeron, Cameron. (I prefer this idea, since classically the concept of spelling something backwards has been used to indicate creepy opposition.)<\/p>\n
Or, as you say, perhaps this baby will be a boy.<\/p>\n
From the candidate list, Brigen reminds me of Bronwyn from the “contains Ron” list, so perhaps Bronwyn would be a good compromise name.<\/p>\n
Brigen also reminds me of Megan and Reagan and Bridget and Rowan and Brinley and Brooklyn and Keegan and Teagan and Morgan.<\/p>\n
I think Molly does work on grown-ups, but it can also be a nickname for Mary. Or you could use Holly.<\/p>\n
If you like Elery and Emma, I wonder if you’d like Emery or Emily or Ella or Hillary.<\/p>\n
I also think Lila(h) would be a very good candidate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sara writes: My husband doesn\u2019t hate my chosen girl name (Norah Anne Zimmermann) but he doesn\u2019t love it. Since I was sixteen or maybe younger (and I\u2019m almost 30 now) this has been what I have wanted to name my little girl, and so this him not liking it is really making me sad. (I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1x2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}